Reflections

I participated in the KTM last weekend. That statement may imply nothing in the first glance, but actually tells quite a bit when read carefully. I would have ideally liked to say -- "I completed the KTM last weekend", but alas, that is not true. I pulled out of the marathon midway, did around 31 km. Actually, even that is a distorted statement, I would have run for about 26 and pretty much walked the remaining 5Km. The marathon again proved that it will deal ruthlessly with people who do not respect it. I have been running about 15 to 20Km on the weekends with little mileage during the course of the week and still dared to attempt the marathon. And it showed. I could barely manage beyond the 26 KM mark and pretty much walked the 5Km to the finish line. The incident was a good enough reason to get myself resolve mentally to prepare well for the next race. The Ultra, a 50Km race, is coming up in two months time -- good opportunity to get over the KTM disappointment. Just fini...

As I recently read the news on Michael Jordan's induction in the NBA Hall of Fame, my mind started thinking on why he rates as my (and for many others) "most admired" sportsperson. Is it just that he is an immensely talented athlete? It it that he won several Championship rings? Is it because he is in possession of every possible trophy that the NBA has to offer? For me, these are certainly good reasons, but not the only ones. I think two other attributes are equally important -- the attitude and intensity he brought to his practice sessions and his mental toughness. Try doing a web search on "Michael Jordan Mental Toughness" and you will see several several links. Here are a couple Yahoo and Google . This is clearly a testament to the great athlete's trait. I am tagging this post with those key words, you probably will get this also in search results soon :) Why do I feel these to attributes are important? It is fairly evident that he is immensely gifted...

Since the Phoenix Marathon in Jan 2008, I have not run a race and so when the opportunity came up for the 10K race organized by the IITB Alumni association, I did not want to miss it. Even though my running has been sort of erratic for the last few months, it was just a 10K run and I was confident that I would be able to manage it easily. I left home pretty early as I had to collect my running bib and reached the venue (EGL) at around 6:30AM. I was surprised that there was a reasonable crowd, about 60 people finally participated. It was organized and conducted by people like you and me, so it felt good. I did not know many people there, but luckily that changed as two of my colleagues, Amareshwari and Vinod turned up. They are not regular runners, I do not think they have run in the recent past at all, so it was really nice to see them muster up enthusiasm and show up where others would have just preferred to cuddle up and sleep on a Sunday morning. The race started pretty much on t...